Covid19 entered my home – without asking a permission. It gave us an important lesson, that we can’t control the life.  

At first my husband started to get symptoms and later a positive test result, I knew that I will be in an official isolation, so I decided to have one last walk in the forest just by myself. I put some music on, and the sun was shining, just before Easter the spring seemed to be coming to Finland finally and I thought that life is actually quite good. When Kirk Franklin started to sing Hosanna, I took one very strong (that’s what I thought) and long step – and BANG! said my achilles. There I was, in isolation and with a broken achilles. 

The only place that accepted me was a Corona hospital as I was carrying the virus. I managed to get some treatment there and ended having an orthopedic cast for 9 weeks. 

After 8 days of Covid19 symptoms at home my husband got very weak and started to have serious breathing problems, he has hospitalized. I ended up being home alone in isolation, no one was allowed to enter the house, neither was I allowed to leave the house. I was also Covid19-postivite and started to have the symptoms on top of my achilles problems. I was not able to talk with my husband as he was so weak and wasn’t able to manage without extra oxygen. He started to send me some goodbye texts and the nurse said that he is crying a lot in his room in hospital. I texted my husband and asked if I could make a prayer request on my Facebook wall for my friends. He then was so weak and said ok. He is more private person than I  and it is not that natural for him to share his personal needs. 

Then it started to be very clear that not even prayer can be controlled. It started to go viral, spread like a virus. I started to have messages from all over the world from different kind of people, individuals and members of prayer groups. Different denominations: Lutherans, evangelical, catholics, fundamentalists, openminded, Pentecostals… Africans, Europeans, Americans, Asians… you name it. People that we don’t know started to pray for my husband and me. Many of them told us that something woke them up in the middle of the night and they got an urge to pray for us. It was overwhelming. Almost embarrassing. We are lucky to live in one of the best social security countries in the world and people from very poor areas were praying for us! 

I work as a CEO for World Vision Finland and my husband is a vicar in a Lutheran congregation in Helsinki. One of world Vision sponsors asked me if she could mobilize her contacts in our area programs to pray for us. Our roles changed! The teacher for a slum school in Korogotcho was supporting us with her prayers, former beneficiaries and sponsored children were praying for us. Area program staff and global center staff was praying for us. It must have been tens of thousands of people. 

I was so touched by this, as I so well knew about the environments that these people are living in. They are my role models. Some of them have escaped war, they have been injured, some of them have been living on dumpsites, some of them have had terrible diseases and lost their children and/or parents. And still they have been the ones that have been able to start a new page in their lives. They are focusing on things that they have, not on the things they don’t have. They are writing their own stories and holding the pen in their own hands. They have been infected by the Empowered World View. A view that includes faith, hope and love. 

Suddenly I realized that my family is so much larger than what it seemed. My family includes millions of people, those that gather under the same tree of prayer and lend their power and hope for me when I don’t have it. God uses our sighs, whispers, cries, our hearts, hands, heads and feet. When our strengths are weak, our community carries us by lending their hope and faith in prayer. 

May God give us tender hearts to hear what he wants to tell us during this time and helping hands to lend our strengths to the ones that that are weak. Each on their turns.